Hello All! seems to be okay now. I am into the building of the first settlement. Old Paul is 'on duty'. I am, however, trying to determine if 'Hotfix 2.3.1 is no longer required. (I posted the question separately on this forum). Insofar as my mod volume and load order, I DO realize how heavy my mod load is, but right now it is more of an experiment than a regular thing. I usually have separate MO2 profiles with much less mods loaded according to the play-through. As for now, Jake seems to be much more responsive. I AM using the save game check utility and I checked my active scripts in places and they are well below 10 in most cases. Also, a good number of my mods are meshes/textures only. I will see where this all leads me. I have yet to make it to SS2 Ch2. Looking forward to it! P.S. to Msalba ... at the beginning of my games, I wait for all mods to be initialized at least according to the on screen notifications. I do this mostly so as not to miss some prompts that need responses or choices. and RayBo ... you couldn't be more right in your response! You know that I know ... that my mod load is somewhat insane. I DO have an MO2 'testing profile' where I only loaded SS2 with no other mods. Jake showed up and started dialogue immediately. So yes, it is not SS2.